BACKGROUND Functional health literacy (FHL) and patient activation can impact diabetes control through enhanced diabetes self-management. Less is known about the combined effect of these characteristics on diabetes outcomes. Using brief, validated measures, we examined the interaction between FHL and patient activation in predicting glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) control among a cohort of mult...

BACKGROUND It is well established that the success of much healthcare provision is strongly linked to the quality of interaction that occurs between healthcare professionals and patients. Nurse-led consultations are becoming ever more common in primary care, and patient satisfaction with this type of clinical encounter is reportedly high. While many fields of health care have been the subject o...

Interactive computer generated characters can be applied to the medical field as virtual patients for clinical training. The user interface for the virtual characters takes on the same appearance and behavior as a human. To assess if these virtual patients can be used to train skills such as interviewing and diagnosis they need to respond as a patient would. The primary goal of this study was t...

A prospective survey of pharmacists' tasks and patients' knowledge and satisfaction was conducted in 35 randomly selected community pharmacies in Tabriz, Islamic Republic of Iran. The total pharmacist interaction received a mean score of 3.05 out of 5. Providing written directions for use attained the highest score of 0.98 out of 1. Patients scored 3.18 out of 5 for knowledge about their medici...

Evidence for gender differences in physicians' communication with their patients comes primarily from Western countries. Little is known about whether these gender differences would also be observed in Turkey, where there are explicit rules about male-female conduct. The purpose of this study was to observe male and female gynecologists' communication with their patients in a gynecology clinic ...

Monitoring of patient-ventilator interactions at the bedside involves evaluation of patient breathing pattern on ventilator settings. One goal of mechanical ventilation is to have ventilator-assisted breathing coincide with patient breathing. The objectives of this goal are to have patient breath initiation result in ventilator triggering without undue patient effort, to match assisted-breath d...

Good communication between a patient and a doctor has long been accepted as essential for quality health care. “Good patient-clinician communication leads to better clinical outcomes and more satisfied patients. Poor communication leads to poor outcomes, dissatisfaction, and malpractice litigation [Coulehan and Block 2001].” How to educate medical students on these communication skills is the d...

Optimizing patient-ventilator synchrony is essential in managing patients who require prolonged mechanical ventilation in the long-term acute-care hospital. Inadequate synchrony can increase work of breathing, cause patient discomfort, and delay both weaning and general rehabilitation. Achieving optimal synchrony in the long-term acute-care hospital depends on a number of factors, including adj...

We studied the use of videoconferencing for the pre-operative patient-surgeon interaction. Subjects were recruited from otolaryngology patients undergoing surgery at a tertiary hospital. They were randomised to a conventional face-to-face interaction with their surgeon or a videoconference call via tablet computer. Afterwards, subjects and surgeons completed questionnaires about the experience....